Chapter Seventeen #3
We got settled into our respective apartments and thankfully didn’t have to wait too long to find out if we could infiltrate Park’s locations. Within a few days, we were once again in Annie’s living room, making plans.
“Robert said he’d find a way to get us some low-level positions,” Chris said. “So that’s one less thing we have to worry about.”
“What do you mean by ‘us’?” Annie asked.
“I’ll be the other person.”
She shook her head. “Chris, we can’t let you do that. You’ve wanted to be done with this for a long time. We’ll figure it out. You take care of your family.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Chris said, looking at Annie. “I’m not sending my wife in there without having an idea of exactly what she’s walking into.”
“Understood,” Annie said, raising her hands.
“In the meantime, Kevin, Jay, and I should go with Gabby to continue training,” I said. “I’m still not great with controlling my powers a hundred percent.”
“Antonio and I will come, too,” Anali said.
“Yes, I’ll stay with Jack,” Annie said. “Not tomorrow, though. First, Ryan and Kevin will make sure it’s safe to use powers at the lab. After that, you should both keep practicing. If this all goes to shit, we’ll need you to time-jump again.”
“We should probably go way into the future,” I said. “On purpose, this time.”
“We could do that.” Annie nodded. “The only thing is, we’ll have no idea what other nightmare we might be walking into.”
“Or we go back to the past.” Nick raised an eyebrow.
“Or we go back a few days and warn ourselves about what will go wrong. Or we stop Park from ever being born. Or we stop Luminaries from ever being made, but then how do we stop it if we don’t have the powers to change it?
It’s all ridiculous.” With a sigh, he raised his hands and let them drop to his sides.
“When will this stop? You wanna go keep going around in time-jump circles?”
“All right, all right.” Annie stood. “I get your point. We’ll stay and fight. These guys will train and, if needed, they’ll time-jump to save all the kids. Is that at least okay with you?”
Nick nodded. “That’s fine.”
“Okay, so that’s set,” Kevin said. “There’s no time to waste. Why don’t you guys start filling out the applications online?”
“I’ll text you the links,” Chris said, looking at Annie and Nick staring at each other. “Umm, Nick? Come on. I’ll help you with yours.”
Once the others had left, Annie and Nick went to bed for the night, while Kevin and I remained seated on the couch, completely lost in conversation.
“No, you wouldn’t!”
“Of course I would!” Kevin laughed. “It would save us all a lot of trouble.”
“You’re telling me that you’d really go back and prevent Park from being born?”
“Either that, or I’d find a way to adopt her and show her the right way to be a freaking human being,” he said, shrugging.
“You’re out of your mind!”
“Come on. Imagine? You, me, and little baby Ava? One happy family.”
I snorted. “Okay, now you’ve lost your mind.”
“I did lose it. Come here, help me find it.” He leaned in for a kiss, but before our lips could touch, Nick came out for some water.
“Get to bed, you two.”
“Yep, soon!” I said.
As soon as we were alone again, Kevin moved closer and whispered, “You know, you could make things simpler and actually just stay with me. Jay offered to stay with the twins.”
“We’ve barely gone on one date. You think moving in is appropriate already?”
“I don’t know about appropriate, but I sure wanna spend time together without worrying that my brother is going to come out and scold me,” he said, looking toward their bedroom door.
“Ah, very good, then. I thought you might have had other intentions.”
“I mean . . . I do.”
“Keep it in your pants, Pierce.”
“All right, it’s in my pants. It’s in my pants!” He laughed. “But you know I’m not rushing you into anything, right?”
“Yes, I know. I’m just completely exhausted, and I want to make sure we keep our heads clear for what’s coming.”
“We’ll be vigilant,” he said. “We’ve trained years and years for these types of things.”
At that, I took the pencil from the table and went to fling it at him. Before I even released it, with my hand still in midair, he’d already grabbed my wrists and pinned them down behind me on the pillow.
He was lying on top of me, smiling. “See? Vigilant.”
I freed my hands from his grip and put them around his head. I pulled him down toward me for a kiss. As things got hot and heavy, we rolled down from the couch and onto the floor. I bumped my elbow on the coffee table and he hit his head.
“Not very vigilant there,” I said, giggling.
He stood and helped me up. “What can I say? We all have our weaknesses.”
“We better go to bed. It’s almost three, and Gabby is taking us to the lab nice and early.”
“You have no compassion,” he said. “You’re sending me to sleep alone on our first week in this new place and time?”
“I believe in you. You can manage.”
He started walking backward toward the door. “Can I, though?”
“Good night, Kevin,” I said, trying to ignore the pain along my neck. It was throbbing again. This time it was a hundred percent not in my head.
“Good night, Ryan.”